Video: Choosing your type

Before we get into the nitty gritty of choosing our different character formats -- font, font style, point size, etc -- let's talk about some of the design considerations that are involved in doing that. Here I have a finished document: the Roux Academy of Art and Design catalog. And this is a fictitious college, and there are numerous documents created around this for use in lynda.com courses. Now, in creating this, there were a number of factors that went into the typeface selection, and the way that typeface or typefaces were used.

Explore the numerous type options, type-related features, and type-specific preferences of Adobe InDesign. Using practical, real-world examples, instructor and designer Nigel French dissects the anatomy of a typeface and defines the vocabulary of typography. The course moves from the micro to the macro level, addressing issues such as choosing page size, determining the size of margins, adjusting number columns, and achieving a clean look with baseline grids. This course takes you from laying out a page to delving into the hows and whys of typography.

Topics include:

Understanding text threads and text flow methods in InDesign

Using Copy and Paste vs. Place

Choosing and combining typefaces

Understanding leading and how it relates to type size and column width

Comparing points, picas, and ems

Learning the proper use of white space and break characters

Understanding the finer points of kerning and tracking

Working with punctuation, special characters, ornaments, and ligatures

Choosing your type

Before we get into the nitty gritty of choosing our different character formats --font, font style, point size, etc -- let's talk about some of the designconsiderations that are involved in doing that.Here I have a finished document: the Roux Academy of Art and Design catalog.And this is a fictitious college, and there are numerous documents createdaround this for use in lynda.com courses.Now, in creating this, there were a number of factors that went into the typefaceselection, and the way that typeface or typefaces were used.

First of all, there are the macro design considerations, like the page size, thesize of the margins, and the number of columns.These are all going to influence the use of type.So this is our standard column width.It's rather narrow, which means that we need to make sure our typeface isn't toobig, so that we have enough characters per line, or our column measure issufficiently wide to get enough characters per line.How much is enough?Well, different people have different standards, but in this case, if I look atthe Info panel, we can see that we have somewhere in the region of about 35 to40 characters per line.

Given the nature of this document, I would say that that's just about enough.The typeface that has been used is Adobe Garamond Pro, and this was chosen for anumber of different reasons.One, it's very readable.It is a serif typeface. The general rule of thumb -- and it is a general rule ofthumb to which there are many, many exceptions --is that serif typefaces are more readable in print, as opposed to sans serif typefaces.

We also see this document does contain sans serif typefaces for the coursenames, and for other headings. We will be talking about combining fonts in just a moment.So we've chosen a serif typeface.The point size is 9.5 points, and that has been chosen so that it allows enoughcharacters per line.The default point size when you just type in onto a blank page is 12 points.This in print is too big.

If you're preparing a document for use onscreen, that's another matter.We will be talking in an upcoming chapter about considerations for screen typography,but for print, we want somewhere in the region -- and it will vary according to thetypeface you have chosen, and your audience, and also, let's not forget your ownpersonal preference, which is a massive factor to consider --but it's going to vary somewhere between about 8.5 and 11 point, in terms of the body text.

So another consideration has been the alignment.The alignment here is left aligned, or to put it another way, it's ragged, andthat has been chosen because we do have a narrow column.If we were to attempt to justify this text, we would likely, with columns thisnarrow, end up with big spaces between the words.Another consideration, and a very important one that sets the rhythm of thedocument, is the leading value.And the leading value is this one here; that is the space between the lines.

The default setting for the leading value is something called auto leading, whichwill give you a leading value that is a 120% of your point size.And that's always a bad idea to use the auto leading setting for text.I will be talking specifically about that in the chapter on leading.Another reason Adobe Garamond Pro has been chosen is that it comes in not justthe regular weight, but also italic, bold, and bold italic, giving us a certainamount of variety and flexibility within that same typeface family.

Another reason is that this particular font is a Pro font; it's an OpenType font,which means that it's going to have an extended character set.And if we look at the Glyphs panel, the Glyphs panel is going to show as all ofthe available characters for this typeface, and that's important, especially ifyou're working with multilingual publishing, or if you just want a lot oftypographic extras, like ligatures, and different numbering styles, then anOpenType Pro font will give you those.

And let's not forget the other reason that this has been chosen, and that isbecause it's available.It comes installed with InDesign, so it's convenient.Now, we shouldn't confuse convenience with lowering our standards, butconvenience, in this case, is a big factor,and the typefaces that I am choosing throughout this course are, for the mostpart, those that come installed with InDesign, and that's just because if you arefollowing along, you can choose those typefaces too.

I mentioned earlier on how this document combines the use of serif typefaces forthe continuous reading text with sans serif typefaces for the heads, for theclass names, and for the captions.And this is a very common technique, and you see this technique used again, andagain, and again in various different ways in all sorts of publications: seriftypeface for the body text, sans serif for the heads and the subheads.This gives us contrast, and contrast is a very important factor whencombining typefaces.

The sans serif typeface family that has been used is Myriad Pro, and this hasbeen chosen for many of the same reasons that I chose the Adobe Garamond Pro.It's available, it comes in a range of weights, and in this case, widths also, andit's an OpenTypeface, which means that we have an extended character set.Myriad Pro, especially when used in its bold weights, and it's semibold weights, Ifeel contrasts well with the sans serif typeface Adobe Garamond Pro.

Of course, that's just a personal opinion, but I think it works particularly well.But that combination of serif and sans serif is one that you see again, and again, and again.So those are just some of the considerations that we will be talkingabout, particularly in this chapter, but also in some of the next chapterswhich follow.

Find answers to the most frequently asked questions about InDesign Typography .

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The exercise files provided aren't working in my version of InDesign (CS4, CS5, or CS5.5). What should I use?

This course was recorded using InDesign CS6. For InDesign users working with CS4, CS5, or CS5.5, IDML files are provided.

A: We added 18 new movies, primarily in the "Using Typekit" and "Type Treatments and Effects" chapters. These movies describe new and enhanced typography features in the latest release of InDesign CC, and are indicated by the "(CC 2014.1)" tag in their names.

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